Syrian Uprising

Television journalist Barbara Walters has apologized for trying to help a former aide to Syrian President Bashar Assad land a job or get into college in the United States. The ABC veteran acknowledged the conflict in trying to help Sheherazad Jaafari, daughter of the Syrian ambassador to the United States and a onetime press aide to Assad. Jaafari helped Walters land an interview with the Syrian president that aired in December. Walters said in a statement issued Tuesday that she rejected Jaafari's later request for a job at ABC News, saying it was a conflict of interest.

BEIRUT - March was the bloodiest month of the Syrian uprising, with more than 6,000 documented deaths, a pro-opposition human rights group reported Monday. More than one-third of those killed were civilians, including nearly 300 children, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a London-based organization with monitors in Syria. For months the Syrian conflict has seen daily death tolls topping 150 as government shelling and aerial bombardments have increased amid ongoing clashes between loyalist forces and rebel fighters.

September 2, 2011 | By Ramin Mostaghim and Ellen Knickmeyer, Los Angeles Times

In a sign that Syria's crackdown on dissent is fraying one of its few alliances in the region, an Iranian lawmaker said in an interview published Thursday that his nation should be supporting the protesters and not the Syrian regime. Ahmad Avaei, a member of the Iranian parliament's national security commission, said the fact that Syrian President Bashar Assad joined Iran in opposition to Israel and support for Lebanon's armed Hezbollah movement was no longer reason enough to continue backing Assad's government.

Television journalist Barbara Walters has apologized for trying to help a former aide to Syrian President Bashar Assad land a job or get into college in the United States. The ABC veteran acknowledged the conflict in trying to help Sheherazad Jaafari, daughter of the Syrian ambassador to the United States and a onetime press aide to Assad. Jaafari helped Walters land an interview with the Syrian president that aired in December. Walters said in a statement issued Tuesday that she rejected Jaafari's later request for a job at ABC News, saying it was a conflict of interest.

BEIRUT - March was the bloodiest month of the Syrian uprising, with more than 6,000 documented deaths, a pro-opposition human rights group reported Monday. More than one-third of those killed were civilians, including nearly 300 children, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a London-based organization with monitors in Syria. For months the Syrian conflict has seen daily death tolls topping 150 as government shelling and aerial bombardments have increased amid ongoing clashes between loyalist forces and rebel fighters.

As the Syrian uprising extends into its ninth month, a cycle of detentions and missing people amid a violent crackdown is playing out like a tragic case of deja vu. Syrian President Bashar Assad has been employing the same tactics that his father, Hafez Assad, used 30 years ago when a Muslim Brotherhood uprising was met with mass detentions, imprisonments that would ultimately span decades and, finally, the massacre of at least 10,000 people in...

Fatat Malouk said she has no doubt: The burned, mutilated and seemingly unrecognizable body parts that she viewed in a Syrian military hospital in September were the remains of her child - the victim, she said, of government thugs who snatched the teenager off the street. "My heart tells me this was my daughter," Malouk said. Her daughter, Zaynab Hosni, 18, was posthumously immortalized as "the flower of Syria," and her gruesome fate, captured on amateur video, became a graphic rallying cry for the Syrian opposition.

ANTAKYA, Turkey -- Large protests marking the two-year anniversary of the Syrian uprising were held across the country Friday as the opposition vowed to continue its fight to topple President Bashar Assad. As the fighting entered a third year, there were scant signs of a political solution that some world leaders have been pushing. More than 70,000 people have been killed, many of them women and children, according to the United Nations. In Damascus, the capital, government security forces spread out across many neighborhoods in an effort to prevent large demonstrations, opposition activists reported.

Flights into the Syrian city of Aleppo were reportedly halted as rebels and government forces clashed, preventing planes from reaching the international airport. Rebels have sought to cut off the country's airports to stop President Bashar Assad's regime from receiving new infusions of supplies and weaponry. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a pro-opposition group based in London, told the Associated Press that the Aleppo airport had been closed since Monday as fighting raged around a nearby army base.

BEIRUT - An Al Qaeda-affiliated militant group in Iraq has united with one of Syria's most-feared Islamic opposition groups in a vivid display of how the two-year Syrian civil war has emboldened extremists across the two countries' borders. The group known as the Islamic State of Iraq also revealed its formative role in creating Al Nusra Front, or Jabhat al Nusra, a Syrian group conceived last year that the U.S. has designated as a terrorist organization, according to an announcement posted on militant websites late Monday.

As the Syrian uprising extends into its ninth month, a cycle of detentions and missing people amid a violent crackdown is playing out like a tragic case of deja vu. Syrian President Bashar Assad has been employing the same tactics that his father, Hafez Assad, used 30 years ago when a Muslim Brotherhood uprising was met with mass detentions, imprisonments that would ultimately span decades and, finally, the massacre of at least 10,000 people in...

Fatat Malouk said she has no doubt: The burned, mutilated and seemingly unrecognizable body parts that she viewed in a Syrian military hospital in September were the remains of her child - the victim, she said, of government thugs who snatched the teenager off the street. "My heart tells me this was my daughter," Malouk said. Her daughter, Zaynab Hosni, 18, was posthumously immortalized as "the flower of Syria," and her gruesome fate, captured on amateur video, became a graphic rallying cry for the Syrian opposition.

September 2, 2011 | By Ramin Mostaghim and Ellen Knickmeyer, Los Angeles Times

In a sign that Syria's crackdown on dissent is fraying one of its few alliances in the region, an Iranian lawmaker said in an interview published Thursday that his nation should be supporting the protesters and not the Syrian regime. Ahmad Avaei, a member of the Iranian parliament's national security commission, said the fact that Syrian President Bashar Assad joined Iran in opposition to Israel and support for Lebanon's armed Hezbollah movement was no longer reason enough to continue backing Assad's government.

July 30, 2011 | By Borzou Daragahi and Alexandra Sandels, Los Angeles Times

A battered but still boisterous Syrian opposition movement and a worn-out and increasingly isolated government confronted each other again Friday, days before the start of the emotionally charged holy month of Ramadan. Massive protests after midday prayers erupted across Syria, including some of the largest seen so far in the symbolically potent northwestern city of Hama, where thousands were killed in a 1982 government crackdown, and the besieged far eastern city of Dair Alzour, on the Euphrates River.

BEIRUT -- Turkey on Thursday became the latest nation to recognize the newly created Syrian opposition coalition as the “legitimate representative of the Syrian people,” and the Turkish foreign minister called on other nations to follow suit. Ankara's move comes in the same week that France made a similar declaration, although France went a step further by labeling the opposition bloc the nation's sole legitimate representative. Syrian dissidents are seeking bolstered financial and military aid from allied governments.